John Lott’s new book debunks more received liberal wisdom

Remember those stories Obama told during the 2008 campaign about people dying because they lost their health insurance? Lott digs deep into some of those stories, demonstrating that Obama misrepresented — sometimes substantially — what actually happened and what the consequences were for these people.

Perhaps the most impressive comparison is the one that Dr. Lott makes between Canada and the U.S.— two countries closely tied economically but which took fundamentally different approaches to the economic disaster that started in 2008. While both countries suffered similar unemployment rates in 2008 — both rising rapidly until early 2009 — the change in rates then decoupled. Canadian unemployment rates continued to rise — but at a far slower rate than those of the U.S. The big difference? Obama, with his $787 billion “stimulus,” drove up deficits dramatically, while Canada’s government chose instead to continue cutting corporate income tax rates. As Dr. Lott points out, the Europeans, who we tend to think of big-spending liberals, were far more restrained after the crash, and were concerned about the madness of U.S. spending policies.